Bryan Fischer Award Nominee: Matt Barber

The Bryan Fischer Award is given to those who display a staggering lack of self-awareness, accusing their opponents of their own worst traits and engaging in rank hypocrisy. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel has a Worldnutdaily column that deserves such an award.

Long before homosexual activist Floyd Corkins entered the D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC) with the intent to commit mass murder, I warned from the rooftops that the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center’s anti-Christian “hate group” propaganda might spur such bloodshed. With a column headlined, “Liberal violence rising,” I wrote, “The SPLC’s dangerous and irresponsible (‘hate group’) disinformation campaign can embolden and give license to like-minded, though less stable, left-wing extremists, creating a climate of true hate. Such a climate is ripe for violence.”

Tragically, my deepest fears were realized.

Then, in August, days after Corkins was heroically disarmed by FRC employ Leo Johnson, whom Corkins shot in the arm, I penned another column titled “Fanning the flames of left-wing violence.” I plead with the SPLC to end its “dishonest and reprehensible” strategy of “juxtaposing FRC and other Christian organizations with violent extremist groups” in a transparent effort to marginalize them…

I no longer believe the SPLC has a sense of goodwill. In fact, based on FBI evidence and the group’s own actions (and inaction), I and many others are left with no other inference but this: The SPLC – a left-wing extremist fundraising behemoth – may be intentionally inciting anti-Christian violence.

Of course, Barber does not apply such reasoning consistently. One single instance of violence against a religious right group and he automatically blames it on those who criticize religious right groups and point out their agenda of hatred and bigotry. So if someone kills an abortion doctor, that can be blamed on anti-abortion groups who call abortion doctors murderers and make extreme claims like, say, claiming that the abortion industry is the second coming of Adolf Hitler, right? Oh, of course not. In fact, a few weeks before the FRC shooting, Barber made exactly that claim.

And yet violence against abortion providers has been going on for decades, largely unabated. David Gunn, John Britton, George Tiller, Robert Sanderson, Barnett Slepian, Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols have all been killed by anti-abortion fanatics. Hundreds more regularly receive death threats. Nine more have been the victims of attempted murder. Clinics have been bombed all over the country. But if you dare to suggest that there may be some link between that long history of violence and the anti-choice movement, Barber would throw a fit over it.

Violence against gay, lesbian and transgender people is an everyday reality for huge numbers of people. In 2011, the latest for which we have data, 20.8% of all hate crimes were against LGBT people up from 19.3% in 2010. That’s almost 1300 people, and those numbers are still largely underreported. Religious right groups like the Army of God regularly threaten the lives of gay activists. But if you dare to suggest that there may be some link between those long history of violence and people like Barber claiming that gays are part of a vast conspiracy to destroy America and God and grandmothers and puppies too, he would throw a fit over it.

One single instance of violence against his side and it’s all the fault of those who criticize those he agrees with. Hypocrisy much?

I’d suggest declaring this Barber idiot the world champion, retiring the Bryan Fischer Award and creating the Matt Barber Award.

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This reminds me a little of Sarah Palin’s statement after the Tucson shooting of Gabby Giffords and others, where she insisted that the violence was the work of “a single evil man” and that crimes “begin and end” with the criminals who commit them- IOW, that her words and actions (crosshairs on an electoral map) couldn’t be blamed for the shooting. But Barber’s got a little catching up to do to match the blatant flying of the double standard by Palin when she said this:

But especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

Violence that occurs after something she said can’t be blamed on her; here, she’s (arguably) right. But then, in the very same statement, to say that prospective violence could be blamed on her opponents’ words “inciting” it, is just an astounding lack of self-awareness.